A Plea To The Basketball Gods: Give Us Russell Westbrook Back!

For a long time, the Basketball Gods were calm, making their displeasure known only through bad calls and fluke losses. Then came the Great Peril of 2013-14, when player upon player was felled, blind and Job-like, for sins unbeknownst to themselves or anyone else. Their followers raised their arms up to the skies and shrieked, trying in vain to understand why this season lay in ruin, why Derrick Rose and Brook Lopez were now faced with careers at risk.

And then the Gods came for Russell Westbrook, and this time no one was surprised.

Let’s get a few things straight: The Basketball Gods do not exist in any way, shape, or form. Injury is not something we would ever wish upon our worst sports enemy. Oh, and Russell Westbrook is, if not my favorite player, then at least the patron saint of the NBA that I watch on a nightly basis. No one would argue he’s the league’s best player, or even its most entertaining. But if anyone has angered these gods, again and again, it’s Russ.

I want to be optimistic. Sure, Westbrook’s getting surgery on his right knee for the third time in less than a year. But the expectation is that Westbrook will be back after the All-Star break, in plenty of time to rain down fire and pestilence on the playoffs. I’m going to exhale deeply all over that one: You would never say that Westbrook relies solely on athleticism—he afflicts opponents on a far deeper level—but without that crazed momentum, there’s no Westbrook.

That drive is why Westbrook stands for something far more potent than eccentricity or unpredictability. He flings himself at the basketball with total abandon, sometimes verging on elastic rage. Opponents have no answer to it. He can barely control it himself at times. And if occasionally he plays out of control, he’s pretty much always ungovernable by the standard logic of basketball. Westbrook is impossible to gauge or decipher. His schedule, his way of getting from here to there, doesn’t quite line up with the usual order of things. If anyone would drop in and out of the year at odd intervals, notch several dramatic comebacks in one season, or throw the West into turmoil with a mid-season absence, it’s Russell Westbrook.

When Derrick Rose went down last month, Chicago went into mourning. For a certain set of NBA weirdos, Westbrook’s absence has nearly the same gravity. Derrick Rose plays for the soul of a city; Russell Westbrook is basketball’s messy and destructive unconscious. His off-the-court fashion is layered, showy, but his game is a different kind of spectacle, a high-test yowl that rips through most of the things that make sense in basketball. Kevin Durant may win the MVP this year; he gets better every year, fills out holes in his game, and comes up big at all the right times. Westbrook, meanwhile, never checks anyone’s bos and pretty much does whatever he wants. You’d never call him irresponsible, though, because he always makes something happen. Ask a man to build a house and he just might give you a bomb shelter instead.

That’s the genius of Westbrook. It’s why I’ll miss him so much and why the NBA is infinitely poorer without him around. Even on those nights that OKC is not playing, knowing he’s out there and active keeps us all on our toes. I don’t know if any NBA players get spooked by the mere thought of Westbrook—probably not, their egos aren’t exactly built for metaphysical discomfort—but for those of us watching the game, Westbrook is indispensable.

As a rule, discerning sports fans are allergic to narrative. Actually, scratch that—we spit at mawkish parables and tall tales, the kind of stuff that turns politics into melodrama. But hand us a strong symbol, metaphor, or timeless classic, and we fall hard. I suppose there are hard-wired positivists, folks unable to feel anything not readily supported by numbers. Yet while it doesn’t take much to see through Tim Tebow, it takes a cold soul not to roll over for the Ballad of Knicks-Era Jeremy Lin. It’s why we come here in the first place: undeniable results delivered with a large helping of human interest. Or, to put it differently, humans doing some crazy sports shit so it makes sense.

Then there’s the morbid crossroads to it all, where the story runs smack into our continued viewing pleasure. Did we all wish injury on Westbrook? Of course not. Are all athletes with his wild streak in some way doomed? Only if it extends to their life off the court, which it doesn’t appear to in Westbrook’s case. But if we follow him, we toss the Basketball Gods out the window and pledge ourselves to chaos. What makes Westbrook special is that he frequently gets it to pay off with success.

Russell Westbrook is the ultimate boom-or-bust player, the uncertain author of his own over-the-top saga. It’s not that he has to pay a price for riding so high, for having sold his soul, or dared own it himself, or however you want to formulate it.

Westbrook can go full-on heretic and dodge the Basketball Gods but they will always have the last laugh. They can’t keep him from making fools of them, but they can count on him coming crashing back down to Earth eventually. If it’s not injury, it’s a game that very publicly calls him into question. Even Westbrook can’t stay up there forever. If he did, there wouldn’t be any risk involved. He wouldn’t be Westbrook. And we wouldn’t pledge our undying allegiance to him.

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